Fears of a “51% attack” have consumed bitcoiners over the past few days as the bitcoin mining capacity of Ghash.io, the largest mining pool, has toyed with crossing 50% of the entire network.

The angst stems from the theory that if someone or some institution were to control the majority of the network’s computing power they could exploit that dominant position to confirm false transactions or double-spend (i.e. counterfeit) bitcoins, all for personal, fraudulent profit.